By James Langton

(November 28 – 13:15 ET) – Banks stocks like last night’s election results, but the Liberal victory isn’t doing much for tech stocks. As a consequence, the TSE 300 is down 116 points to 9,012.

Volume is rather light at 65.2 million shares, almost two to one in favour of sellers. Losers are outpacing winners eight to five.

The tone in the market is rather negative this morning, with 10 of the TSE’s 14 groups down. Among the winners, financials are the only sector making a decisive move upward.

Techs are leading the downside, with both the industrials and consumer stocks down more than 3%. Utilities, golds and media stocks have also suffered substantial drops.

Nortel Networks is leading the way down, off almost 4% on decent volume of 3.3 million shares. Capital spending plans are pounding the semiconductors, networkers, and optical firms trading on Nasdaq, and Nortel is simply caught in the slipstream.

With this trend running through the market the other top losers include Research in Motion, Exfo Electro, Certicom, Pivotal, Microcell, Centricity, Descartes Systems and GSI Lumonics .

Nasdaq Canada is down 18 points to 966 on 25.3 million shares traded. As usual JDS Uniphase is dictating the trading there.

BCE is also down 1.4%, but that comes on the heels of yesterday’s run up on murmuring that Onex is looking at the firm. Those rumours were squelched with today’s news that Onex guru Gerry Schwartz is looking to buy bookseller Chapters Inc.

Privately held Trilogy Retail Enterprises Inc., controlled by Schwartz and his wife Heather Reisman, is offering $13 a share for 50.4% of Chapters. If the offer goes ahead, Chapters would likely be rolled in with Reisman’s rival Indigo book chain. Chapters stock is up 23% on the news.

The big winners in today’s market are the banks. Last night’s election is sparking hopes that bank mergers will allowed in the near future. TD and CIBC are the most active issues on the upside. The election results were also supportive for the Canadian dollar.

Bank of Montreal reported its fourth quarter profit rose to $1.75 a share, compared with 86¢ a share last year. Its return on equity also almost doubled. BMO is trading higher along with the rest of the banks. Insurance stocks are mixed.

Also rallying are stocks that were beaten up a bit yesterday, including Veritas, Corbys, Sears, Agrium and Anderson Exploration.

In other news, Tesma International Inc. reports its first quarter profit is up to 77¢ a share from 66¢ a share during last year’s first quarter.

In New York, volume is average and the market picture is rather ugly. The Dow Jones industrial average is down 9 points to 10,537.

The Nasdaq composite index is off 87 points to 2,793. The S&P 500 has dropped six ticks to 1,343.

The Dow is getting support from its Bush-friendly stocks — drugs and tobacco — on news that Gore’s hopes are fading. The usual techs are taking a pounding.

The CDNX continues to slide, too. It is off 12 points to 3,023 on very light volume of 10 million shares. Techs are to blame, down 1.3%, while mines are up and oils are flat.

In what may be the worst underwriting job ever, Corra Capital Corp debuted today at 15¢ and is the top trader, up 1.300% to $2.10 on almost 3 million shares on its first day of trading.